Warm Up! An Experimental Project on Design for Social Innovation and Urban Regeneration.

The research aims to share the results from the “Warm Up” Workshop—an experimental project held by PhD Product Design students from Sapienza University of Rome in collaboration with St. Petersburg University (SPbU)— involving students from SPbU’s Graphic Design Master Degree Program. The objective is to apply the topics of Design for Social Innovation and Design for Public Space to investigate the opportunities for new sociability in the social context of Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. The experimental aspect of the workshop is due to the fusion of methods and approaches typical of Product Design, such as human-centered design (HCD), and the Avant-Garde heritage of the Russian School. By illustrating their concepts of products/services, the students have developed a new practice within the fields of Product Design and User Experience. The final result is to serve a hypothetical urban regeneration in terms of Social Innovation, designing the user experiences as storyboards with the classical structure of “before and after” that would narrate the final change in users’ behaviors

Spiritual (Including Folklore) Culture As a Tool for Teaching the Russian Language in a Multicultural Environment: Practical Experience

The article discusses the issues of improving the methodology of teaching the Russian language and the effectiveness of teaching the Russian language in a multicultural environment with the inclusion of elements of spiritual culture (including folklore) in educational institutions (humanitarian gymnasiums, high schools and institutions of higher education) of the Republic of Mari El. The authors demonstrate differences in the use of folklore in the main (class, out-of-class and out-of-school) activities of the experimental network institutions (Federal Institute for the Development of Education, Moscow) and the training workshop (‘Prosveshchenie’ Publishing House). It is concluded that projects aimed at socio-cultural adaptation, successful socialization and enculturation of Russian youth are of great importance from different angles, including the issue of harmonizing interpersonal and intercultural relations in modern Russian society. The authors’ experience (E. A. Plotnikova, M. N. Pirogova) in introducing certain units of Russian traditional culture into the study of the Russian language by foreign students also had certain positive reviews. It is obvious that at the initial stage of training, students should receive a certain linguistic minimum, including knowledge of the country’s culture, traditions, features of verbal and non-verbal communication, etc. Application of innovative educational technologies, including quests and competitions, gives good results in this case. Keywords: multicultural environment, spiritual culture, folklore culture, teaching the Russian languag

Folklorism of the Contemporary Youth’s Creative Work

Since the second half of the 20th century, there has been an increased interest in traditional forms of culture, which is probably associated with an increase in the national self-awareness of the peoples of the Russian Federation. Based on this, the authors considered the features of the use of the folklore heritage of Russian creative youth. The authors have studied the creative works of 24 young writers aged from 25 to 35. In particular, they have studied the types of folklorism in their creative works, provided the general estimate of the productivity and significance of the youth’s experience of using the folkloric heritage in the modern literary process and generally in culture. The paper is defining the phenomena of the youth culture in the early decades of the 21st century (fiction, CG). The authors have made a conclusion on the diversity of the youth’s creative works’ connection with the folkloric samples: the construction of the social-ethnographic reality, the field of the characters’ identity, a new ‘cosmos’, creation of the individual universes as well as the literary version of folkloric fairytale on their basis. We have also noted the tendency towards the use of the Russian folkloric characters with the purpose of giving them some universal traits of the characters of the popular computer games. The authors found that the fabulous texts are used by young authors in both the genre category and one of the ways to create on their basis new texts, various types of aesthetic experiments and games

Fairy tale traditions in amateur and professional young writers’ creativity

The turn of the 21st century has seen Russian writers’ increased interest in the genre of fairy tale. This paper discusses young Russian writers’ approaches to fairy tale traditions in texts of their own. The subjects of the study consisted of the Debut Prize winners and the so-called amateur writers (fans of Tolkien’s and Rowling’s books, and gamers) and their literary works. The study is aimed at establishing main trends in usage of folklore traditions in the first two decades of the 21st century; the paper is also concerned with examining similarities and differences between two generations of modern Russian writers in the matter of their approaches to classical heritage. To compare fairy tale texts, Vladimir Propp’s narrative model has been applied. One of the central claims of the study is that young authors tend to emulate literary samples by prominent contemporary Russian writers (mostly by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya). Thus, an efficient way of creating a contemporary fairy tale by a young author is to immerse its characters into the modern reality that is presented in a variety of its manifestations – from everyday routine to philosophic ideas. The young writers’ texts display such traditional features of literary folklorism as genuine fairy tale plots and motifs, their structural and style models, characters, magical objects, and the artistic device of estrangement

THE EFFECT OF DEXTRANAL ON THE GUT BACTERIOBIOME OF CALVES

Background. The search for more efficient pro- and prebiotics to improve calves’ health, including decreasing the incidence of intestinal infections and increasing biomass production, has been very actual. The effect of prebiotics, however, is poorly, especially as related to gut microbiome biodiversity.  The aim of this work was to study the influence of dextranal on the growth of calves and their gut(rectum) bacteriobiome. Materials and Methods. Bacteriobiome composition and structure was assessed in the control group (K, conventional diet) and dextranal-receiving group (D) in 18-20 days aged calves  by 16S metabarcoding (V3-V4, Illumina MiSeq). Results. Overall, we found 377 operational taxonomic units (OTU) from 168 genera, 91 families, 55 orders, 30 classes and 11 phyla, with more than the half of the total number of identifies OTUs belonging to the Firmicutes phylum, followed by Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria. The relative abundance of the phylum-specific nucleotide sequences followed the same order of dominance. Dextranal addition resulted in the increased (11.9 kg/calf, or 15%) of the living body mass of the two-months old calves in group D as compared with group K: consequently, the dextranal-related difference in the calves’ gut bacteriobiome composition and structure can be viewed as beneficial. It primarily concerns the decreased abundance of the opportunistic pathogen Escherichia/Shigella (Gammaproteobacteria) in group D. Overall 73 OTUs, including six dominant ones, were found to be differentially abundant in the groups. However, changes in the relative abundance of some OTUs were difficult to interpret, most likely due to the low strain/species resolution by 16S rRNA gene fragments’ sequences. As for the α- biodiversity, there were no differences between the groups, but the overall trend directed to the increasing α- biodiversity of the calves’ gut bacteriobiome after dextranal treatment. Conclusion. This study reports the first attempt to inventory the gut bacteriobiome of the cattle in the region, and the obtained results provide the basis for a more detailed and taxonomically targeted further research

Total Problem of Constructing Linear Regression Using Matrix Correction Methods with Minimax Criterion

A linear problem of regression analysis is considered under the assumption of the presence of noise in the output and input variables. This approximation problem may be interpreted as an improper interpolation problem, for which it is required to correct optimally the positions of the original points in the data space so that they all lie on the same hyperplane. The use of the quadratic approximation criterion for such a problem led to the appearance of the total least squares method. In this paper, we use the minimax criterion to estimate the measure of correction of the initial data. It leads to a nonlinear mathematical programming problem. It is shown that this problem can be reduced to solving a finite number of linear programming problems. However, this number depends exponentially on the number of parameters. Some methods for overcoming this complexity of the problem are proposed

Linear-quadratic programming and its application to data correction of improper linear programming problems

The problem of maximizing a linear function with linear and quadratic constraints is considered. The solution of the problem is obtained in a constructive form using the Lagrange function and the optimality conditions. Many optimization problems can be reduced to the problem of this type. In this paper, as an application, we consider an improper linear programming problem formalized in the form of maximization of the initial linear criterion with a restriction to the Euclidean norm of the correction vector of the right-hand side of the constraints or the Frobenius norm of the correction matrix of both sides of the constraints

Interpolymer Complexes of Poly(methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine) and Polyacids

It has been shown that macromolecules of poly(methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine) can form hydrogen bonded interpolymer complexes with homo- and copolymers of carboxylic acids and with poly(vinylphosphonic) acid in aqueous solutions. Polarized luminescence and IR spectroscopy were applied in the investigation. Nanosecond relaxation times characterizing the mobility of the chain fragments for the initial luminescent labeled polymers were determined and their changes by a factor of 2–50 were established during the formation of an interpolymer complex. Hydrogen bonds play a dominant role in the formation of these complexes. Hydrophobic interactions serve as an additional stabilizing factor. It is established that poly(methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine)/poly(vinylphosphonic acid) complex forms a looser structure in comparison with those for polycarboxylic acids as result of electrostatic repulsion between charged groups

Bacillus-Based Probiotic Treatment Modified Bacteriobiome Diversity in Duck Feces

The intestinal health of poultry is of great importance for birds’ growth and development; probiotics-driven shifts in gut microbiome can exert considerable indirect effect on birds’ welfare and production performance. The information about gut microbiota of ducks is scarce; by using high throughput metagenomic sequencing with Illumina Miseq we examined fecal bacterial diversity of Peking ducks grown on conventional and Bacillus-probiotic-enriched feed. The probiotic supplementation drastically decreased the presence of the opportunistic pathogen Escherichia/Shigella, which was the major and sole common dominant in all samples. Seventy other bacterial species in the ducks’ fecal assemblages were found to have probiotic-related differences, which were interpreted as beneficial for ducks’ health as was confirmed by the increased production performance of the probiotic-fed ducks. Bacterial α-biodiversity indices increased in the probiotic-fed group. The presented inventory of the duck fecal bacteriobiome can be very useful for the global meta-analysis of similar data in order to gain a better insight into bacterial functioning and interactions with other gut microbiota to improve poultry health, welfare and production performance